Odd Words April 19, 2012

Who knew New Orleans’ own Susan Larson, former book editor of the Times Picayune and literary woman about town, was a Pulitzer Prize fiction judge? I caught her on NPR Morning Edition discussing the prize board’s decision not to award a prize in fiction. Ms. Larson was very politic in accepting the panel’s decision but I think its crazy to ask people to screen 300 nominees down to three and then not pick a winner.

An important editorial decision: In the interest of occasionally eating and sleeping, all events are going to present the damn book title however the original source listed it. Anyone offended and requesting I follow strict MLA guidelines is invited to proof my end of semester papers.

Without further ado, we have three events on a night when all sensible people will be power chugging french press and working all night on a paper on the role of medieval theater and festival in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Knight’s Tale (knight procouned nicht, medieval root of “ni”), worrying about where Odd Words is going to do its World Book Night distribution, and demonstrating our new found knowledge of the concept of occupacio by writing this extended “without further ado” introduction that does exactly what I said I wasn’t going to do, at great length, and with a great deal of further ado:

& Thursday at 17 Poets! readers will include Poets Christopher Shipman, Vincent Cellucci,
and Allison Cobb. Shipman is the author of Human-Carrying Flight Technology (Blaze VOX), Romeo’s Ugly Nose (forthcoming from Allography Press), and co-author with DeWitt Brinson of Super Poems (forthcoming from Kattywompus Press). Shipman was a finalist for the 2011 Carolina Wren Poetry Series Award, the 2010 Akron Poetry Prize, the 2010 Copperdome Prize, and the 2009 Slash Pine Press Prize. Cellucci founded the Baton Rouge reading series River Writers. He wrote An Easy Place / To Die and teaches communication for Louisiana State University’s College of Art + Design. Cobb is the author of Born2 (Chax Press, 2004) about her hometown of Los Alamos, New Mexico, and Green-Wood (Factory School, 2010) about a famous nineteenth-century cemetery in Brooklyn, New York. Her work combines history, personal narrative, and poetry to address issues of landscape, politics, and ecology. 7:30 p.m. at that prominent power spot on the ley lines of the poetry multiverse, The Goldmine Saloon

& Maple Street Book Shop will celebrate the release of Ben Kopel’s poetry anthology, Victory Friday, April 20 at 6 p.m. CA Conrad and Magdelana Zurawski will be helping Ben do his victory lap. Kopel currently lives in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he teaches creative writing and English literature to high school students. He also curates the Left of the Dial Reading Series at Euclid Records in the Bywater neighborhood. Victory, his first full-length collection of poems, was recently released by H_NGM_N Books. You can see what he is currently up to on partmutilationpartvictory.tumblr.com.

& Last but not least Octavia Books hosts a reading & signing with Gerald Duff featuring his novel, DIRTY RICE Thursday at 6 p.m. Dirty Rice is the tale of Gemar Batiste, a talented young pitcher from Texas recruited into the minor Evangeline League during the 1930s. Unlike his Acadian team mates Batiste is a reservation-raised Alabama-Coushatta Indian who is asked to play the stereotypical Indian among other challenges.

& On Friday at NOMA , Megan Burns and Gina Ferrara, whose poetry has been influenced by art, and one artist, Tricia Vitrano, whose art has been influenced by poetry will be the speakers in a panel discussion moderated by Susan Larson, host of The Reading Life on WWNO. The event starts at 5:30 p.m. in the Great Hall, with a reception for Megan Burns, Gina Ferrara, Susan Larson, and Tricia Vitrano. Snacks will be provided, and a cash bar will be available. At 6:00 p.m. the panel discussion will begin in the auditorium At 7:00 p.m. there will be a book signing in the Great Hall.

& Garden District Bookshop will host Susan Morse discussing and signing her book The Habit on Saturday, April 21 at 3 p.m. Morse’s book is the story of a sandwich generation daughter caring for her 85-old mother who has decided to become a nun.

& Also on Saturday, April 21, at 3 p.m. Maple Street Book Shop Healing Center location on St. Claude hosts an Earth Day discussion with Antonia Juhasz, the author of The Tyranny of Oil (Harper Paperback) and Black Tide: The Devastating Impact of the Gulf Oil Spill (Wiley).

& On Sunday the Maple Leaf Bar Reading Series hosts a group reading by THE NEW ORLEANS HAIKU SOCIETY followed by an open mike, and possibly some drinking completely unrelated to the featured guests. Unless, of course, they’re buying.

& This and every Monday is The Writer’s Block, an open reading on the steps of the amphitheater across from Jackson Square at 9 p.m. You can follow their Facebook page here.

& On Tuesday, April 24 Octavia hosts French artist Gersin comes to present and sign his recently publishied NEW ORLEANS SOJOURN. A sketchbook by definition, this impressive book is Gersin’s travel diary, written in French, from his three-month trip to New Orleans. Gersin chose New Orleans for its aura of culture, history, music, and soul, and immersed in the local atmosphere, he documented the city—its day-to-day life, history, myths, and folklore, as well as his impressions—in the form of notes and detailed illustration.

& And before I am severely punished for failing to remind both of us (that’s me and you all, not me and my only reader, although that’s possible): the distinguished Pulitzer Prize Judge Susan Larson hosts A Reading Life Tuesdays at 6:30 p.m. on WWNO-FM, 89.9. I’m putting it in my Android calendar right now. I swear. (Oh, look, a squirrel! . . .

The Typist

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About Toulouse Street

Toulouse Street began as a memoir of place, subtitled Odd Bits of Life in New Orleans, an attempt to capture "the savor of the genie-soul of the place which every place has or is not a place,"* Leopold Bloom crossing Royal Street.

Over time is has grown in strange ways. It is, to borrow novelist Tim O'Brien's line: A Fiction. It is loosely based on the life of a man of late middle age racing frantically towards and away from death. Any apparently auto-biographical bits are about "me", The Typist, in the sense that the ringing of wind chimes is about the weather.

Any resemblance to persons living or dead is chronologically orthogonal.

Odd Words was birthed in 2010 as a prominent feature when the local newspaper folded its Books page and literary listings disappeared from the scene. To see your event listed there, contact odd.words.nola@gmail.com no later than Saturday of the week prior to the event.

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